Michael Kaufman White Ribbon Campaign (Appearing in the Spring 99 journal of the International Association
for Studies of Men.)

Dr. Kaufman is a speaker,
writer, and consultant on gender issues. He delivers both keynote
talks and interactive workshops for international organizations,
governments, and non-governmental organizations; corporations and
professional firms; trade unions and professional associations;
universities and high schools. He provides individual gender sensitivity
coaching. And he is a consultant and writer on a wide range of gender
issues

For a moment my eyes turned away from the workshop participants and out
through the windows of the small conference room and towards the Himalayas in the distance
north of Kathmandu. I was there, leading a workshop, largely the result of remarkable work
of Unicef and Unifem which, a year earlier, had brought together women and men from
throughout South Asia to discuss the problem of violence against women and girls and, most
importantly, to work together to find solutions. As I turned back to the women and men in
the group, it felt more familiar than different: women taking enormous chances - in some
cases risking their lives - to fight the tide of violence against women and girls. Men who
were just beginning to find their anti-patriarchal voices and to find ways to work
alongside women. And what pleasantly surprised me was a test of a series of ideas about
men's violence that, until then, I wasn't entirely sure if they were more about the
realities in North and South America and Europe - that is largely-Europeanized cultures.
Here, then, is the kernel of this analysis:

Patriarchal Power: The First "P" Individual acts of
violence by men occurs within what I have described as "the triad of men's
violence." Men's violence against women does not occur in isolation but is linked to
men's violence against other men and to the internalization of violence, that is, a man's
violence against himself. This triad - each form of violence helping create the others -
occurs within a nurturing environment of violence: the organization and demands of
patriarchal or male dominant societies. 1 What gives violence its hold as a way of doing
business, what has naturalized it as the de facto standard of human relations, is the way
it has been articulated into our ideologies and social structures. Simply put, human
groups create self-perpetuating forms of social organization and ideologies that explain,
give meaning to, justify, and replenish these created realities. Violence is also built
into these ideologies and structures for the simpler reason that it has brought enormous
benefits to particular groups: first and foremost, violence (or at least the threat of
violence), helps confer on men a rich set of privileges and forms of power. If indeed the
original forms of social hierarchy and power are those based on sex, then this long ago
formed a template for all the structured forms of power and privilege enjoyed by others as
a result of social class or skin color, age, religion, sexual orientation, or physical
abilities. In such a context, violence or its threat become a means to ensure the
continued reaping of privileges and exercise of power. It is both a result and a means to
an end.

The Sense of Entitlement to Privilege: The Second "P"
The individual experience of a man who commits violence may not revolve around his desire
to maintain power. His conscious experience is not the key here. Rather, as feminist
analysis has repeatedly pointed out, such violence is often the logical outcome of his
sense of entitlement to power and privilege. If a man beats his wife for not having dinner
on the table right on time, it is not only to make sure that it doesn't happen again, but
it is an indication of his sense of entitlement to be waited on. Or, say if a man sexually
assaults a woman on a date, it is about his sense of entitlement to physical pleasure even
if that pleasure is entirely one sided. In other words, as many women have pointed out, it
is not only inequalities of power and privilege that lead to violence, but a conscious or
unconscious sense of entitlement.

The Third "P": The Paradox of Men's Power It is my
contention, however, that such things do not in themselves explain the widespread nature
of men's violence, nor the connections between men's violence against women and the many
forms of violence among men. Here we need to draw on the paradoxes of men's power or what
I have called "men's contradictory experiences of power." 2 The very ways that
men have constructed our social and individual power is, paradoxically, the source of
enormous fear, isolation, and pain for men ourselves. If power is constructed as a
capacity to dominate and control, if the capacity to act in "powerful" ways
requires the construction of a personal suit of armor and a fearful distance from others,
if the very world of power and privilege removes us from the world of child-rearing and
nurturance, then we are creating men whose own experience of power is fraught with
crippling problems. This is particularly so because the internalized expectations of
masculinity are themselves impossible to satisfy or attain. This may well be a timeless
problem, but it seems particularly true in an era and in cultures where rigid gender
boundaries have been overthrown. Whether it is physical or financial accomplishment, or
the suppression of a range of human emotions and needs, the imperatives of manhood (as
opposed to the simple certainties of biological maleness), seem to require constant
vigilance and work, especially for younger men. The personal insecurities conferred by a
failure to make the masculine grade, or simply, the threat of failure, is enough to propel
many men, particularly when they are young, into a vortex of fear, isolation, anger,
self-punishment, self-hatred, and aggression. Within such an emotional state, violence
becomes a compensatory mechanism. It is a way of re-establishing the masculine
equilibrium, of asserting to oneself and others ones masculine credentials.

What makes this possible as an individual compensatory mechanism has
been the wide-spread acceptance of violence as a means of solving differences and
asserting power and control. What makes it possible are the power and privileges men have
enjoyed, things encoded in beliefs, practices, social structures, and the law. Men's
violence, in its myriad of forms, is therefore the result both of men's power, the sense
of entitlement to the power, and of the fear (or reality) of not having power. But there
is even more.

The Fourth "P": The Psychic Armour of Manhood Men's violence
is also the result of a character structure that is typically based on emotional distance
from others. As both myself and many others have suggested, the psychic structures of
manhood are created in early childrearing environments often typified by the relative
absence of fathers and adult men. In this case masculinity gets codified by absence and
constructed at the level of fantasy. But even in patriarchal cultures where fathers are
more present, masculinity is codified as a rejection of the mother and of femininity, and
the qualities associated with caregiving and nurturance. As various feminist
pyschoanalysts have noted, this created rigid ego barriers, or, in metaphorical terms, a
strong suit of armor. The result of this complex and particular process of psychological
development, is a dampened ability to experience what others are feeling and to not
experience other people's needs and feelings as necessarily relating to one's own. Acts of
violence against another person are, therefore, possible. How often do we hear a man say
he "didn't really hurt" the woman he hit? Yes, he is making excuses, but part of
the problem is that he truly may not experience the pain he is causing. How often do we
hear a man say, "she wanted to have sex"? Again, he may be making an excuse, but
it may well be a reflection of his diminished ability to read and understand the feelings
of another.

Masculinity as a Psychic Pressure Cooker: The Fifth "P"
Many of our dominant forms of masculinity hinge on the internalization of a range of
emotions and their redirection into anger. It is not simply that our language of emotions
is muted or that our emotional attennae and capacity for empathy are somewhat stunted. It
is also that a range of natural emotions have been ruled off limits and invalid. While
this has a cultural specificity, it is rather typical for boys to learn from an early age
to repress feelings of fear and pain. On the sports field we teach boys to ignore pain. At
home we tell boys not to cry and act like men. Some cultures celebrate a stoic manhood. Of
course, as humans, we still experience events that cause an emotional response. But the
usual mechanisms of emotional response, from actually experiencing an emotion to letting
go of the feelings, are short-circuited to varying degrees among many men. But, again for
many men, the one emotion that has some validation is anger. The result is that a range of
emotions get channeled into anger. While such channeling is not unique to men, nor is it
the case for all men, for some men, violent responses to fear, hurt, insecurity, pain,
rejection, or belittlement are not uncommon.

This is particularly true where the feeling produced is one of not
having power. Such a feeling only heightens masculine insecurities: if manhood if about
power and control, not being a powerful means you are not a man. Again, violence becomes
means to prove otherwise to yourself and others.

The Sixth "P": Past experiences. This all combines with
more blatant experiences for some men. Many men grew up in households where their mother
was beaten by their father. For some men this results in a revulsion towards violence,
while in others it produces a learned response. They grow up seeing violent behaviour
towards women as the norm, as just the way life is lived. But the phrase "learned
response" is almost too simplistic. Studies have shown that children who grow up
witnessing violence are far more likely to be violent themselves. Such violence may be a
way of getting attention; it may be a coping mechanism, a way of externalizing
impossible-to-cope-with feelings. The past experiences of many men also includes the
violence they themselves have experienced. In most cultures, while boys may be half as
likely to experience sexual abuse than girls, they are twice as likely to experience
physical abuse. Again, this produces no one fixed outcome, and, again, such outcomes are
not unique to boys. But in some cases these personal experiences instill deep patterns of
confusion and frustration, where boys have learned that it is possible to hurt someone you
love, where only outbursts of rage can get rid of deeply-imbedded feelings of pain. And
finally, there is the whole reign of petty violence among boys which, as a boy, doesn't
seem petty at all. Boys in many cultures grow up with experiences of fighting, bullying,
and brutalization. Sheer survival requires, for some, accepting and internalizing violence
as a norm of behaviour.

Ending the Violence This analysis, even presented in such a condensed
form, suggests that challenging men's violence requires an articulated response that
includes: * Challenging and dismantling the structures of men's power and privilege. If
this is where the violence starts, we can't end it without support by women and men for
feminism and the social, political, legal, and cultural reforms and transformations that
it suggests. * The redefinition of masculinity or, really, the dismantling of the psychic
and social structures of gender that bring with them such peril. The paradox of patriarchy
is the pain, rage, frustration, isolation, and fear among that half of the species for
whom relative power and privilege is given. We ignore all this to our peril. In order to
successfully reach men, this work must be premised on compassion, love, and respect,
combined with a clear challenge to negative masculine norms and their destructive
outcomes. Pro-feminist men doing this work must speak to other men as our brothers, not as
aliens who are not as enlightened or worthy as we are. * * Organizing and involving men to
work in cooperation with women in reshaping the gender organization of society, in
particular, our institutions and relations through which we raise children. This requires
much more emphasis on the importance of men as nurturers and caregivers, fully involved in
the raising of children in positive ways free of violence. * Working with men who commit
violence in a way that simultaneously challenges their patriarchal assumptions and
privileges and reaches out to them with respect and compassion. We needn't be sympathetic
to what they have done to be empathetic with them and feel horrified by the factors that
have led a little boy to grow up to do terrible things. Through such respect, these men
can actually find the space to challenge themselves and each other. Otherwise the attempt
to reach them will only feed into their own insecurities as men for which violence has
been their traditional compensation. * Explicit educational activities, such as the White
Ribbon Campaign, that involve men and boys in challenging themselves and other men to end
all forms of violence. This is a positive challenge for men to speak out with our love and
compassion for women and other men.